Identity In Pieces: When You Don’t Know Where You Count

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2014-10-15 19:09Z by Steven

Identity In Pieces: When You Don’t Know Where You Count

The Aerogram: A curated take on South Asian art, literature, life and news
2014-10-01

Jaya Saxena
Queens, New York

Last summer, I wore a pink and yellow sari to my cousin’s wedding. As my Indian family lingered in the hotel lobby, dressed up and waiting for our shuttle, we received a few looks from other hotel patrons. Even in New York, it’s not every day you see a group of formally-dressed Indian people, so we didn’t pay the reaction much mind. To them, we looked like we belonged together, and if they noticed me I was just the lightest of the crowd.

A few months later, I went to another Indian wedding in Boston. This time, my then-fiance (a tall white guy with a red beard) and I traveled alone on the T, dressed in Indian finery as we’d been asked. The stares we got were different this time–they were wondering what these two white people were doing dressed up as Indians.

A common refrain when talking about racism is that it’s not about race. Or that it is and it isn’t. It is in that hundreds of years of built up context have given people of color the short end of the stick, but obviously there is nothing inherent about whiteness that means it deserves more (and if you think there is, kindly stop reading and find yourself a bog to suffocate in). What makes racism is power and lived experience. It’s that a white kid who shoots up a school is taken alive, while a black kid walking down the street is shot dead. It’s that resumes with “white” names are accepted over identical ones with “ethnic” names. And it’s why I really have no clue if I can call myself biracial…

Read the entire article here.

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